I entered the Creative Writing program at VIU dreaming of the novel I would have ready for publication when I graduated. Somewhere along the way the dream shifted and literary magazines became my focus. The goal of becoming a magazine editor seemed much more attainable. Perhaps even more fulfilling. GOOEY Magazine is proof of that.

In truth, as the Managing Editor, GOOEY is only partially mine. There is a fabulous team of people at the heart of it who live and breathe weirdness and humour and who believe in getting those stories out into the world.

Henry Osborne and I came up with the idea and convinced our online publication class to take a chance on our weird ideas. GOOEY was created in the spring of 2023, like Frankenstein’s monster coming alive.

It’s fairly simple to create a magazine. All you need is a vision and a website. The hard part is when you decide to keep going.

The Online Magazine Production class at VIU provided us with a template of sorts. Under the watchful eye of our professor, Susan Juby, we wrote up contracts and letters to the authors, practiced proofreading and, well, built a website.

Henry and I knew from the beginning that GOOEY was a project we wanted to be a part of for a long time. The class laid the foundation and gave us an incredible core editorial team.

When the class ended after GOOEY’s first volume was published in April of 2023, so did the momentum. It’s hard to take a project and run with it when there’s no incentive. I think that’s the problem with creative writing in university; we get so dependent on deadlines and grades as our incentives that when those guide rails are gone, we don’t know how to set our own.

When it was time to begin Volume 2 in spring 2024, the first step was to assemble the editors—whom we affectionately call the Overlords—which, in this modern and exciting post-covid world, meant Zoom meetings and emails.

The idea of editing, especially managing the editing, as purely making notes on a manuscript is severely under-representative of the real workload.

There are the fun jobs, like voting on story submissions, talking with authors, and editing pieces. Then there are the not-so-fun jobs, like drafting rejection letters—and then sending said letters.

There are also just so many emails.

I am incredibly grateful for the Overlords. They are the ones who work directly with the authors and, if it wasn’t for them, GOOEY wouldn’t have a second volume. It’s really all hands on deck when it comes to making this dream a reality.

Through the spring and into the summer, we put Volume 2 together. Without the guidance of a course outline and not yet having developed a complete style guide or publishing outline, it felt so much harder than the first time. I also didn’t realize how much work that first volume was.

The first hurdle was redesigning the website as a non-tech-savvy person.

For GOOEY Volume 1, we decided to layout the GOOEY website with blog posts. That was the easiest option with the time crunch of the semester. But the long-term project had always been to move to a PDF format for readers to download and print themselves if they wanted to.

Craig Taylor, a Creative Writing and Journalism professor at VIU, bestselling author of Londoners, and former Five Dials editor, had mentioned to the fresh-faced GOOEY team that for long-term archiving and keeping a reader engaged longer, the PDF method was best.

The PDF format is a great option for its accessibility, including for those who enjoy the experience of reading a magazine cover-to-cover but can’t afford a physical copy. It’s also great in terms of building a magazine on a nearly non-existent budget. Print publishing is expensive, but PDFs are free.

The unforeseen part of this change was deciding how we wanted to lay it out. I spent days comparing the margin sizes of various literary magazines. My Assistant Editor and the main reason we published on time, Whitley Dunn, helped me sort through the growing pile of decisions on font types, bolding, and spacing.

The design process made me realize that it was okay for the magazine to evolve. The fonts, along with the layout, were changing, and I was happy to see it grow.

When we published our second volume, I felt accomplished and, honestly, relieved. The experience had also been exhausting, filled with trial and error. I wanted GOOEY Magazine to live up to its full potential, and for the sake of GOOEY’s future–and mine–I needed more experience.

The process of building a magazine is incredibly collaborative, and so is the industry itself. Starting my journey with GOOEY led me to seek internships at other literary magazines, first at Room Magazine and now at Take 5 Newsmagazine.

I’ve also worked on Portal Magazine.

Portal is a hallmark of Vancouver Island University’s Creative Writing program. Spanning two semesters, CREW students gain experience in interviewing, editing, proofreading, and publishing. At the end of the year, they have a 96-page full-colour magazine.

It’s magical opening up the first shipment of boxes in April and holding an issue in your hands for the first time. As you feel the smooth texture of the magazine’s matte cover you realize, “it’s here, and it’s real.”

Lee Groen and Paige Vandop were on Portal’s 2024 masthead as fiction and non-fiction editors, respectively. Both have returned to lead the Portal masthead as Co-Managing Editors for the 2025 issue.

Lee, a fourth year CREW student, learned about Portal once he was in the CREW program. Taking the class “became a goal to set, or a prestige that you mature through the program [to] eventually reach,” he said. Many students see the class as a final step in their degree, but the class can be taken at any point.

For Paige, a third year CREW student, moving up the ranks from Editor to Managing Editor has always been the plan, but it’s still an adjustment. “It’s not that it’s harder, it’s more involved,” she said. “And it’s odd to work with people that you mutually respect and keep at a level of peers [while] you’re ostensibly some kind of in-charge person.”

The editorial team is incredibly important to the functioning of a magazine. Paige noted that every person’s role is important. “It’s a small team, but we have really strong members that I know we can rely on. And we’re thankful to have an intern program that can help supplement, and reinforcements coming in for the second term,” Paige said. “But when it’s that small, you really have to hone in.”

Fostering the community and knowing that the editorial team members are trustworthy in their roles is a highlight for Lee. “The smaller the team, the tighter the circle, too. I’d take ten of the closest Portalers [rather] than a hundred just random editors.”

With each new year, the magazine reflects both the creative culture at VIU through the writing and art that it publishes, but also through the mark each new masthead leaves behind. Paige is excited for the opportunities to push the magazine further in its evolution.

“Portal has its bones, and the bones are really good,” she said. “We are hoping to set up some new bones this year to rocket launch the next couple of leaders that are coming in. The Portfolio Reading Series and the Portent contest are relatively new things [and] with each edition I think it becomes better.”

The Creative Writing program at VIU is one of many across Canada that fosters a sense of community that can be hard to find outside of a university setting.

Lee sees Portal as a reflection of the boundless creativity at VIU and is hopeful for what the future has to bring.

“So whatever that says for the publishing industry, it instills a confidence in me,” Lee continued, “that if publishing died everywhere else but VIU, there would still be something deeply rich and valuable here.”

The literary magazine community is very small in Canada; everyone knows everyone. There are many opportunities to join magazines, whether you find them through volunteering at literary festivals or open mic nights or by simply sending in your resume.

When I applied to intern at Room, I met former Managing Editor Shristi Uprety.

She taught me a lot about the inner workings of the magazine over the course of the summer.

Shristi Uprety took a chance at Room after she graduated from the University of British Columbia and was hired as their Managing Editor in 2021.

“I think it helped that I am not Canadian,” Shristi said. “I didn't have this big weight of history behind me … I think that evolution has been really natural.”

The Nepali writer stepped into a fifty-year legacy when she joined the masthead.

Room, founded in 1974, is Canada’s oldest feminist literary magazine. They publish literature, art, and criticism by cis and trans women, trans men, Two-Spirit, and non-binary people as well as centering 2SLGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and disabled voices. This focus on representing diversity is reflected in the magazine’s editorial process which includes a rotating editorial board and a different team of editors from the Growing Room Collective for each issue.

During her time at Room, Shristi was able to make a mark on that legacy and push the team forward.

Shristi worked as the lead editor for many of Room’s quarterly issues. “I found that very exciting and very fulfilling,” she said of the position. “That's really the job that a lot of people envision when you say that you are an editor.”

As Managing Editor, Shristi was more involved with the whole process. “I found [it] is a lot like juggling. You can’t have your eye on only one ball,” she said.

This is especially true for Room, which prints four issues per year. “The managing editor oversees all the different issues that are in production at any given stage,” Shristi explains. “One issue will be in its conception stage where they'll be coming up with their next issue theme. The second issue will be accepting submissions. The next issue will be in the last stages of copy editing. And the very last issue might have already come out and we'll be organizing the issue launch.”

The team, of course, is very important to this process. Room employs a three-tiered system with different lead, assistant, and shadow editors accompanied by a collective of volunteers who read through the submissions for each issue.

Even with the team environment and shared goals, finding personal motivation is crucial in avoiding burnout. For Shristi, the process itself is the incentive. “It's a very rewarding experience,” she said, adding that it’s often difficult to stop taking on more work because of how enjoyable the process is.

When a job is so close to a passion, as for many of us in the publishing industry, it can be easy to accept more work because the work is so fun. But it’s important to remember to practice boundaries and self-care so that you have the energy required to continue doing what you love.

When Shristi graduated from UBC, she stepped into a world that seemed to be dying in front of her. “When I was a young girl, publishing was this endless landscape,” she recalled, “but by 2021, I had started to see a lot of independent literary magazines or other publications shut down or get bought out by larger organizations.”

As a creative and young professional, Shristi struggled to find a hopeful future. She has now stepped down after three years as Managing Editor at Room and works as the Internship Coordinator for MagsBC.

However, Shristi’s new role with MagsBC has made her more optimistic about the future of literary magazines in the province.

“[British Columbia] has so many magazines … there is opportunity here, and I think that I was pessimistic when I left school because I was really unaware of the different opportunities.”

My time at Room showed me the scope of an established magazine and what it can achieve. As an intern this past summer, I wrote alt-text for the images in archived issues, templated fiction and interviews, participated as a collective member by reading several hundred submissions, and proofread Room 47.3: Bodies.

Now a collective member, I have the opportunity to participate in Room’s process by reading submissions, but also as a shadow editor for one of the upcoming 2025 issues.

I’m hopeful for the future of BC’s literary magazines—I’m hopeful for GOOEY. We’ve taken the first hard step and grown because of it. There is always more work to do and emails to send, but the beauty of being in this place of newness and opportunity is that it’s only up from here.